Persona 202X
This seemed like a cool thing, so lets do it.
Here, have some music, too. (The actual content is below the cut; scroll down.)
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
The clock is a strange thing. It's a big one, tall, standing at the height of a man, though it stands tilted. The wooden body is straight and rectangular, with a nicely ridged top coming to a roof-like point. Smooth curves connect the top to the rest of the clock, flowing gracefully and artistically together in a design that must have been hand-cut. It remains unadorned by fantastic engravings or inlays; a simple wave-like curve is cut into the face from each side, flanking the small, white face.
No one is sure what tilted it, or why it still ticks, why it still tocks. The brass pendulum continues to swing back and forth inexorably, always tapping the right side of the clock and bounding back the way it came without losing any momentum. It's steady beats keep the passage of time, an impossibly precise measurement for no one to see, no one to hear. The clock's face goes unread, yet it displays the time proudly, and perfectly... but with a simple, minute error that has never quite been corrected:
There is a thirteenth hour.
The space between the Roman numerals reading "twelve" and the single character displaying "one" has something practically wedged in. The thirteen is small, an afterthought, added by an absent-minded clockmaker or one of his assistants, perhaps as a joke, or perhaps as something more. The feeling of it is of a reminder of things that have passed, rather than anything yet to come. A lingering thought remains, hanging in the air without a body to inhabit, a curiosity about this clock, this clock in the clouds, the clock with a thirteenth hour that it never strikes.
This clock in the clouds.
The clouds are something else. They are still like sand, great dunes of yellow beneath an endless night sky, the pinpricks of stars as still as the not-quite-sands. The clock ticks away inexorably, counting the hours--and then strikes twelve, ringing out, the clear sound calling to something else. The sand-clouds stir and swirl, a massive shape rising from beneath, sending them into a frenzy. The shape grows in size, the sand-clouds billowing upwards in plumes and falling back to where they belong, disturbed and refusing to remain so.
The shape is a hand. The five fingers end in wicked claws, jagged nails curving outward. The arm of the thing rises up, twisted, re-mended and broken again in a horrible parody of a human's limb. The body is a boiling cloud of blackness, only humanoid in the loosest of senses, with a massive skull, bare of flesh yet crossed with painful-looking ridges and portrusions all over it's surface. It swings it's hand forward--
The door beyond stands firm, even as the claw smashes into it. The eyes set into the panels have long been blinded, the golden double doors corroded, cracked and pitted. It beats against the doorframe for a long moment before turning to another target, to vent it's rage in a massive overhead swing meant to batter it down, deeming the door an unworthy victim. A roar echoes in the space-that-is-not-space.
The hand crashes against it. The statue before the door stands with it's arms raised and to it's sides, spread to prevent anything from passing--and this thing in particular. The black hand slams into the statue's arms and chest, over and over, but it doesn't budge. The barbed wire looped around it's arms and stretched to the edges of the door quivers for a moment, and a minute crack forms at it's side, joining the multitude of cracks and fractures that have been inflicted on it in the many years it has stood. The thing clutches at it and tries to pull it down, but it plays the immovable object to what might become the unstoppable force.
The statue stares ahead at the thing. Only one of it's eyes remain visible, the outline of it carefully cut into its surface. The other is blocked, shadowed by a piece of the same grey stone hanging downward over it, one of the only things about the statue itself that makes it distinguishable from any other featureless sculpture. It stands as an eternal guardian, a watcher for the thing that rises from the depths, time and time again.
The thing returns to where it came. The statue stands in silence, the movements of the clock ever so slowly carrying it's hands past the thirteenth hour and to the first. It begins it's cycle anew. Time ticks away, and the thing grows ever larger with each passing day, but nothing changes. The guardian watches in silence, protecting it's charge from the thing hiding out of sight without ever allowing anyone to know it.
Just as he always has.
Just as he always will.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock...
Here, have some music, too. (The actual content is below the cut; scroll down.)
Click to viewTick, tock.
Tick, tock.
The clock is a strange thing. It's a big one, tall, standing at the height of a man, though it stands tilted. The wooden body is straight and rectangular, with a nicely ridged top coming to a roof-like point. Smooth curves connect the top to the rest of the clock, flowing gracefully and artistically together in a design that must have been hand-cut. It remains unadorned by fantastic engravings or inlays; a simple wave-like curve is cut into the face from each side, flanking the small, white face.
No one is sure what tilted it, or why it still ticks, why it still tocks. The brass pendulum continues to swing back and forth inexorably, always tapping the right side of the clock and bounding back the way it came without losing any momentum. It's steady beats keep the passage of time, an impossibly precise measurement for no one to see, no one to hear. The clock's face goes unread, yet it displays the time proudly, and perfectly... but with a simple, minute error that has never quite been corrected:
There is a thirteenth hour.
The space between the Roman numerals reading "twelve" and the single character displaying "one" has something practically wedged in. The thirteen is small, an afterthought, added by an absent-minded clockmaker or one of his assistants, perhaps as a joke, or perhaps as something more. The feeling of it is of a reminder of things that have passed, rather than anything yet to come. A lingering thought remains, hanging in the air without a body to inhabit, a curiosity about this clock, this clock in the clouds, the clock with a thirteenth hour that it never strikes.
This clock in the clouds.
The clouds are something else. They are still like sand, great dunes of yellow beneath an endless night sky, the pinpricks of stars as still as the not-quite-sands. The clock ticks away inexorably, counting the hours--and then strikes twelve, ringing out, the clear sound calling to something else. The sand-clouds stir and swirl, a massive shape rising from beneath, sending them into a frenzy. The shape grows in size, the sand-clouds billowing upwards in plumes and falling back to where they belong, disturbed and refusing to remain so.
The shape is a hand. The five fingers end in wicked claws, jagged nails curving outward. The arm of the thing rises up, twisted, re-mended and broken again in a horrible parody of a human's limb. The body is a boiling cloud of blackness, only humanoid in the loosest of senses, with a massive skull, bare of flesh yet crossed with painful-looking ridges and portrusions all over it's surface. It swings it's hand forward--
The door beyond stands firm, even as the claw smashes into it. The eyes set into the panels have long been blinded, the golden double doors corroded, cracked and pitted. It beats against the doorframe for a long moment before turning to another target, to vent it's rage in a massive overhead swing meant to batter it down, deeming the door an unworthy victim. A roar echoes in the space-that-is-not-space.
The hand crashes against it. The statue before the door stands with it's arms raised and to it's sides, spread to prevent anything from passing--and this thing in particular. The black hand slams into the statue's arms and chest, over and over, but it doesn't budge. The barbed wire looped around it's arms and stretched to the edges of the door quivers for a moment, and a minute crack forms at it's side, joining the multitude of cracks and fractures that have been inflicted on it in the many years it has stood. The thing clutches at it and tries to pull it down, but it plays the immovable object to what might become the unstoppable force.
The statue stares ahead at the thing. Only one of it's eyes remain visible, the outline of it carefully cut into its surface. The other is blocked, shadowed by a piece of the same grey stone hanging downward over it, one of the only things about the statue itself that makes it distinguishable from any other featureless sculpture. It stands as an eternal guardian, a watcher for the thing that rises from the depths, time and time again.
The thing returns to where it came. The statue stands in silence, the movements of the clock ever so slowly carrying it's hands past the thirteenth hour and to the first. It begins it's cycle anew. Time ticks away, and the thing grows ever larger with each passing day, but nothing changes. The guardian watches in silence, protecting it's charge from the thing hiding out of sight without ever allowing anyone to know it.
Just as he always has.
Just as he always will.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock...